In this paper we describe our findings regarding the role of context in usability evaluation, particularly
how the nature of the tasks can affect the users’ perception of the performance of a particular application.
Our findings show a relationship between the variation in the nature of the tasks used for usability
evaluation and the way in which subjects evaluate these applications afterwards using user -administered
questionnaires. Our findings contradict the absolute benchmarking goal of some of these tools, and pose
questions about the possibility of achieving that kind of benchmarks in software usability evaluation.